


except inside my clock

by callixto



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Dissociation, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 05:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19986937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callixto/pseuds/callixto
Summary: prompt 2/4 for eso round 2, something focusing on tsumugi's mental health!





	except inside my clock

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 2/4 for eso round 2, something focusing on tsumugi's mental health!

Tsumugi hears the tea pot shatter before he feels anything, staring blankly down at his hand as tea sizzles across it. It’s a distant sort of pain. There’s heat, and an irritating wetness -- he shakes his hand, vaguely, and realizes only when tea splatters on his glasses that that wasn’t likely to help.

He’s having a fantastic day, thank you for asking.

Mechanically, he leans down to pick up the shards. If they bite into his (scorched) fingers, he feels it three times the muted usual, yet decides it’s unimportant. The secret room has too many books for him to risk liquid staying here for long. He shouldn’t have risked it in the first place, but, well. He shouldn’t have done a lot of things.

He needs to sit down. He sinks to the floor without quite meaning to, head spinning faintly, and decides that the leg of his pants will do nicely for a temporary stop-gap in the fight for cleanliness.

This serves, uselessly enough, til the bookshelf-door slides silently open. “He~llo?” someone calls, in a voice Tsumugi is aware, somewhere far away, that he should recognize. “I’ll be coming in then, don’t mind an old man. The lights--?” The voice stops, and footsteps come to a halt next to him. At some point, his glasses fogged over -- or his eyes closed. “Aoba-kun?” it tries, and he can’t get himself to respond. His company sighs. “Oi,” they snap, this time, but their hand’s gentle when it pats at the side of his face. They tug at his dyed streak, twirling it around their finger. “Tsumugi. Ya gotta get up, or I’m gonna pick ya up. Sittin’ in tea like that’ll make a human sick, dumbass.”

“ _It’s very polite of Rei,_ ” Tsumugi thinks, quite without any of his own input, “ _not to comment on the smell of my blood._ ” And apparently, he’s said this out loud -- who he’s belatedly recognized as Rei solely by dint of his slipping personas tugs his cheek between two fingers like he’s a disobedient child.

“Hey, don’t talk like ya ain’t saying that to my face. Y’re usually distant, but d’you think this is some fuckin’ story? And even I’ve got some self-control.”

He slits his eyes open, and the world spins around him with a dizzying lurch in Rei’s arms. Tsumugi closes his eyes again. Rei’s chest is more comfortable than the floor was.

Distantly, Tsumugi’s aware of a door creaking open, and Rei’s voice raised til hurried footsteps go far away. This new floor is nicely free of tea or ceramic shards, cool under his stinging hands -- he finds himself sitting, propped against something free-standing, and a warm presence settles down next to him. Rei presses his thigh against Tsumugi’s own, stretching his absurd legs far in front of him, and waits.

It’s not that a distinct trait like shifting dialects is the only thing that’d pierce the dizzy fog of Tsumugi’s head right now. That voice of Rei’s is indelibly associated with the past -- relieved, the gears turning in his mind could latch onto that far more easily than anything else, gummed up works and all. They didn’t have to work nearly as hard for that. He knows exactly who and what he was when he could still hear that voice. The now is something more difficult.

A long time later, he opens his eyes. A dull headache pounds at one of his temples, his head fallen, at some point, onto Rei’s shoulder. _‘How embarrassing,_ ’ Tsumugi thinks, and can’t muster the energy to move. He can, however, speak in his own defense. “I’d have been fine if you left me there, Rei-kun..” he says, voice quiet.

“Hm,” Rei says.

“No, really, this is.. bringing me to the Light Music Club room, that’s too far to push yourself,” Tsumugi argues, without the fire for an exclamation. “I was just resting, it wasn’t anything to worry about. I’ll need to clean up, though. Please let me go do so.”

Incredulously, pinning Tsumugi’s leg with his own, Rei answers, “Ya were non-responsive. Y’re still bleedin’, but of course y’re fine. I know y’re unlucky an’ clumsy, but if ya won’t even react to gettin’ hurt, that’s dangerous.”

Tsumugi shrugs. This is not, apparently, the answer Rei wants. He reaches into his coffin, grabbing for something out of Tsumugi’s sight ; then, jerks his arm to its full extent, spreading the fingers on his injured hand impatiently. Only now, after his brain’s fully processed those wounds exist, they sting and pull at his skin. Carefully, Rei wraps each of his fingers in a bright, childishly patterned bandage, taken from the mysterious void that is his collection of coffin junk. “Don’t touch anything,” he huffs, fed up. “The twins’re cleanin’ up, they’re good kids, so ya can stay here til ya.. awake, at the very least. I’ll let ya go when I think y’re safe.”

“It’s my responsibility,” Tsumugi begins to argue, and Rei covers his mouth.

“It ain’t a request.”

Left to his own devices, under such clear instructions, Tsumugi’s stuck sitting here, twisting his injured fingers in his lap and trying to ignore the soggy chill of his tea-soaked pants and sleeve. As such, he feels entirely justified to run his mouth, anxiously. “You didn’t bring my bag, did you, Rei-kun? I have my glasses, but.. I’ve already had such an unlucky day, I’m worried. Especially with these cuts, they’re a bad omen..!”

Rei raises an eyebrow at him, unconvinced, and props his chin on his hand. “An’ what worse could happen, exactly? They ain’t big enough for blood loss.”

“What if they get infected? No, no, we have to make sure. There has to be a ritual, something--”

“Fine,” says Rei easily, and takes Tsumugi’s hand. He gives each bandage a perfunctory kiss, sweetly feather-light, and keeps his hand for his own. “That’ll keep ‘em safe, it’s ‘magic.’ Unit like yours should know all about that, yeah?”

It’s not the same type of magic Tsumugi’s seen from Natsume. But it’s very nice anyways.


End file.
